


Takotsubo

by aliaoftwoworlds



Series: Bitter Retribution [12]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Author is Bitter, Civil War Team Iron Man, Not Steve Friendly, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), broken up steve/tony that will NOT get back together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:54:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26071459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliaoftwoworlds/pseuds/aliaoftwoworlds
Summary: Returning home after the Civil War, Steve’s hopes that things can go back to normal are slowly destroyed. Some things that you break can’t be fixed.
Relationships: past steve/tony
Series: Bitter Retribution [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/972651
Comments: 70
Kudos: 1244
Collections: Tony Stark Defense Squad I, ellie marvel fics - read, superhero tingz





	Takotsubo

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo it’s been over a year since I posted anything in this series. So sorry about that. Seriously, giant thank you to anyone still following it who hasn’t given up on it. The last time I added to this series, I was still a third year. Now I’m an actual doctor. Wow.
> 
> Pretty much everyone is depressed in this story, just a warning. There’s no awesome moment of bamf!Tony telling off the Rogues. It does focus on all of the Rogues, and particularly Steve, feeling bad and being miserable, but Tony isn’t exactly incredibly happy either.

One by one, they left him.

Not all of them physically, but some of them. Not that it really mattered how they left, just that they left. They left unhappy, contrite, unwilling to look back. They wanted nothing to do with Steve anymore.

It started when they returned home—except no, it really didn’t. It started before that. It started in Wakanda, with the arrival of a box. Or maybe it started on the Raft, with anger in cells, directed at anything that happened to be in front of them.

Maybe it really, truly, started in an airport. Out on the hot tarmac, with one man standing strong in his convictions, too blinded by self-righteousness to see that the obstacles in front of him were really friends, willing to compromise, if only he would listen. He didn’t, and now he couldn’t go back.

Clint was the first to leave. He spent his time on the Raft, so Steve hears, ranting about Tony and how he screwed them all over. When Steve broke them out, Clint seemed like he was near ready to go get revenge on Tony, no matter what placating things Steve tried saying.

But Clint’s anger wore out, eventually. He missed his family. And though Tony was the original convenient target of Clint’s anger, he wasn’t in Wakanda, and sometimes Steve started to feel that Clint blamed _him_ for their predicament. Sometimes, in the privacy of his own thoughts, Steve thought there was some truth to that. After all, it wasn’t Tony who called a retired man away from his family, only to end up as a wanted criminal.

Then Tony was clearly involved in getting them all pardoned—as much as Natasha said he simply “didn’t get in the way,” Steve knew Tony had to have something to do with it, _he just had to_ , because then he must have forgiven Steve—and Clint didn’t have any more anger for him. He kept quiet, he wouldn’t say a word against Tony or anyone else, and when they got home, Clint didn’t even come to the Compound for a last goodbye. He took the few possessions he’d come with in the first place and he left with nothing more than a cursory explanation for Steve.

_“Look, man, I know you thought you really needed me here, but I’m done, okay? Don’t call me again. Not if the goddamn world is ending. I had to do a hell of a lot of groveling to get Laura to even think about giving me a second chance, and I’m not about to screw it up.”_

Steve hadn’t even known Clint had gotten to talk to them yet. Clint hadn’t told him about the conversations. He supposed they were private, not something Steve needed to know about, but still… it felt like something Clint would have told his friends. Steve had no doubt Nat knew everything about the situation, and it felt wrong that Steve didn’t, somehow.

Clint walked away from the plane back from Wakanda and didn’t look back, and Steve felt a hole open in his heart.

Bucky was the second to physically leave, but that wasn’t as bitter a parting—not at first, anyway. It wasn’t permanent, he came back every time. The actual leaving took a lot longer, for him.

They were welcomed back, and Bucky was pardoned of everything that he did as the Winter Soldier, as he rightfully should have been. Still, it didn’t seem to really comfort Bucky himself. He walked around the Compound looking haunted, avoiding people, particularly Tony.

It wasn’t right, he told Steve, to be walking around in Tony’s building, living on his dime. No matter that Tony had apologized to Bucky when they all came home, told him that he wasn’t responsible for Howard’s death and couldn’t have stopped it. Steve had watched the exchange approvingly, trying not to let the relief show on his face—he’d been worried that Tony would still blame Bucky. Secretly, he’d also hoped that Tony forgiving Bucky was a sign he would forgive Steve, too. But he’d avoided eye contact with Steve through the entire conversation, focusing only on Bucky.

Bucky accepted the apology with grace and offered his own in return, telling Tony how sorry he was for his parents’ deaths, and the way in which he found out. There was an edge to his voice when he said that part that Steve didn’t like. At the time, he thought it was hints of guilt creeping back in, that Bucky hadn’t actually forgiven himself for what he’d been forced to do.

Later, looking back, Steve realized that the edge was directed at _him_. That Bucky had been discreetly showing his disapproval of the way Steve had handled the situation in Siberia. Steve had enough regrets about that whole thing, was drowning in enough guilt regarding Tony; adding Bucky on to that was even worse.

Bucky went to therapy. That was the first thing to really change. Steve didn’t disapprove, of course, not if it would help Bucky. But he didn’t like the way Bucky was pulling away after he started it. He went most days, leaving the Compound entirely to go somewhere off-site. He said it was “safer,” and when Steve challenged that, saying there really wasn’t a safer place than the Compound, Bucky looked almost disappointed when he explained that he didn’t mean physical safety.

He’d be gone for hours, and he refused to tell Steve what happened in those sessions. Steve was sure he was working through some serious traumatic memories, so he left it alone, not wanting to push too much. He figured once they got past the worst of it and Bucky started to regain some of his old positivity, to smile and laugh again, then he’d open up to Steve more.

He didn’t. If anything, the longer the therapy went on, the more Bucky started pulling away. He did seem less haunted, but it was hard to tell at times, because it seemed like he talked to just about everyone else more than Steve. 

Which was great, Steve tried to tell himself, Bucky needed other friends in his life. But they’d shared so much, Bucky was Steve’s only living link to the past, and sometimes Steve wanted to commiserate, to look back on his experiences with someone who’d _been_ there, who understood.

Except, it seemed, Bucky didn’t understand. After months of therapy, Bucky was more reluctant than ever to talk with Steve about the past. He was constantly saying things like “I’m trying to move past that” and “We can’t change what happened” and “We need to focus on what we can do in the future.” The phrases sounded forced, canned, and they just reeked of some psychologist who didn’t understand what it was like to be suddenly thrown into the future.

Steve eventually gave up on trying to talk about the Winter Soldier, too. At first, he tried his best to be there for Bucky, to help him realize that he wasn’t at fault. He assumed Bucky was being told that in his therapy, too, but Bucky wouldn’t say. Whenever Steve asked if they’d brought it up during the sessions, Bucky would just say something like “We’re working on it,” and change the subject.

They got into an argument when Steve caught Bucky writing a letter of apology to the family of one of the guards in Bucharest who was critically injured when Zemo triggered the Soldier and forced him to break out. Steve hated to think that Bucky felt guilty for things he couldn’t control, and he was furious when Bucky told him it was his therapist’s idea to write the letters in the first place, even if he didn’t actually send them.

Bucky tried to tell Steve that it was important for him to do, to acknowledge his feelings about what happened and the fact that it happened, even if he couldn’t control it. He said that he still did it, even if it wasn’t his fault, and he couldn’t ignore the people who’d been hurt because of it.

That sounded like crap to Steve. It sounded like this therapist was encouraging Bucky to dwell on things he couldn’t change, issues that weren’t his fault, and tragedies that he couldn’t have stopped. He tried to convince Bucky to see it his way, but he got nowhere. They argued, getting more and more heated, until eventually Bucky kicked Steve out of his room and refused to talk to him for two days.

Steve did eventually go back, forcing out an apology he didn’t really stand behind, just so Bucky would talk to him again. He did feel genuinely sorry for upsetting Bucky; it wasn’t his fault his mind was all twisted up and he was still feeling guilty for everything that had happened. But Bucky wouldn’t hear a word against this therapist of his, and so Steve was forced to let it go or get into another argument.

After that, it seemed like a pattern, one Steve hated with every fiber of his being. He and Bucky could spend time together as long as it was shallow, only on the surface. If he ever tried to dive deeper, to really have a conversation about how either of them were doing or what they were feeling, it would end up in a disagreement, and it felt like Steve always just gave up before it could turn into another argument, not wanting too much distance between them.

His heart ached with the distance anyway. He finally broke down one day and asked Bucky outright why they couldn’t seem to see eye to eye anymore, why things were so tense between them. Bucky shook his head. “We’ve tried talking about this, Steve. We don’t get anywhere.” He sounded sad, and so tired.

“Please,” Steve had begged, “just tell me what I need to do to fix this. We were best friends, Buck, brothers. I just want to know how to get back to that.”

“We can’t go back to how things were, Steve. Too much has changed.” He’d heard it so many times before, Steve had to physically stop himself from rolling his eyes. From the shadow that darkened Bucky’s face a moment later, though, he didn’t succeed in keeping the frustration off his face.

“Honestly, Steve, you want to know why we don’t talk much anymore?” Bucky asked, and though he clearly didn’t need an answer, Steve nodded anyway. “We’ve changed. Both of us have changed, and I don’t really like who you’ve turned into.”

Bucky stood there a few seconds more, mouth open like he was going to say something else, but then he closed it without another word and walked away. 

They still worked together well enough, and after that conversation, Bucky was still polite enough, even friendly, to Steve, so long as they weren’t trying to talk about the heavier subjects. 

It didn’t change the heavy feeling in Steve’s heart.

Wanda left him gradually, too, but caused no less guilt in doing so. More, maybe, than most of the others—save for Tony—because he felt responsible for her. She was so young, and Steve had promised to protect her. He wanted her to have a second chance, and he wanted her to be safe doing so.

She was allowed back with the rest of them, but not without severe stipulations. In the beginning, Steve argued passionately against all of them. It was restricting, he said, and completely unfair to her. She shouldn’t be forced to change, or to stop her natural power usage, just to please others who were afraid of her.

But they wouldn’t budge during the negotiations. They played footage from Lagos, which Steve thought was a dirty trick, and showed pictures of the devastation after the bomb went off. They showed a video someone had taken from far away at the airport, of Wanda throwing dozens of cars down onto the Iron Man suit—and Steve had to look away at that one, wincing at the damage done to his lover. Then he had to close his eyes, remembering Tony’s face as he’d slammed his shield into the armor just a few hours later, in Siberia. The cuts and bruises on Tony in that bunker that might have come from Wanda.

They had videos of people talking about Wanda’s powers—people in Sokovia, people she’d taken over with the best of intentions, who now hated her for it. Steve was flushed with righteous anger when they played those videos to try to manipulate Wanda into feeling sorry for saving people, but Wanda’s reaction stopped him.

She was clearly devastated by what people said about her, by what they felt when she used her powers on them. And Steve knew it was meant to be that way, that the cold, uncaring suits in charge of the pardons were using that to get to her, and he wanted to fight against it, to make her see his point of view.

But then one of Tony’s people stepped up to speak on his behalf, and Tony himself was sitting in the background on the video screen, arm in a sling, dark circles beneath his eyes still not enough to disguise the horrifying bruises across his face. Bruises Steve had put there. Tony looked defeated, and Steve felt every protest die in his throat.

Tony didn’t speak up, but his lawyer droned on about the Compound—where they’d all be returning to—needing to be a safe environment for everyone. They said that if Wanda wanted to live and train somewhere else, she was free to do so, but if she chose to step foot in the Compound, her abilities would be monitored at all times and she would be subject to disciplinary action if she refused to obey the rules.

They knew very well that she didn’t have a choice. The Compound was a private entity, but the government people in charge of the pardons were making it a condition that all of the returning Avengers be housed and train together, and that they were supervised in some capacity by the government and other signees of the Accords. If Wanda wanted to come back at all, she would have to agree to all of their terms.

So Wanda signed the Accords, and agreed to every restriction in them. At first, it was just monitoring, not even anything they’d notice. Reports were, apparently, made to the government people who were supposedly in charge of the Avengers now, but nothing ever came of them.

Until it did. The first time someone came over to give Wanda an official “warning” for using her powers unnecessarily around the Compound and its residents, Steve tried to argue against it. He said it was ridiculous, which it was, and unfair to Wanda. They reminded him that all of the Avengers had agreed to these terms. Steve said he didn’t agree to being babysat and reprimanded over nothing. All he accomplished was getting himself an official warning as well.

Two and a half months after returning, the final straw came. Wanda was reprimanded one too many times for using her powers when she didn’t need to. It had come on missions and on downtime. They weren’t kidding about monitoring her. She hadn’t argued at first, but as time wore on, she got sick of their stupid rules and started sneering at the warnings. That only made it worse, until eventually they called a private meeting for just her and the government and Compound people.

She came back wearing a collar. Nothing like that horrible thing on the Raft, it didn’t shock her or hurt her in any way. It was a small, simple thing, lightweight, with a tiny box on one side that was barely noticeable. But it blocked her powers completely. It only allowed her to use them during sanctioned missions, or when an emergency signal was sent.

Steve’s first reaction to it was fury. He went straight to their “handlers” and demanded to know what the hell they thought they were doing. It wasn’t until they threatened him with serious disciplinary action that he forced himself to sit down and listen to them. He didn’t leave any less angry, but he was defeated, and they all knew it. As they’d reminded him, it was part of the agreement Wanda had signed. They didn’t hold her down and force her into the collar, she’d consented and in fact put it on herself. 

Of course, Steve knew—and all of them knew—that she only did that because it was a choice between wearing the damn thing and having her contract terminated. If she was no longer an active signee of the Accords, she’d be deported back to Sokovia, where they still considered her a wanted criminal. Nigeria and Germany still wanted to add charges on as well. She could end up in a much worse situation if she was forced to leave.

Steve went back to Wanda after that, hoping he could at least comfort her, but to no avail. She was sitting in her room, silent tears streaming down her face. Steve tried to talk to her, to offer words of comfort and to be there for her to talk to, but within a minute she was screaming at him. She blamed him for bringing her back, for convincing her to come back and sign the Accords, for trapping her like this. She screamed at him to get out of her room, and he did, not knowing what to say. Outside, he leaned against the wall, heart hurting at the knowledge that she was right.

He wasn’t really sure when Natasha left, mostly because it took him so long to notice.

Outwardly, she was mostly the same since returning. She’d come to their aid in Germany, and Steve was grateful, thinking she’d seen that he was right. She confessed to him later that she’d told Tony Steve wasn’t going to stop, and that she needed to let him go before things escalated. At first, he’d thought she was stretching the truth to make it sound less like a betrayal to Tony. Later, he started to realize maybe she wasn’t embellishing at all.

She acted the same as ever around him when they returned to the Compound, but for some reason, maybe Steve’s loneliness in the face of the others pulling back from him, he started to watch her more. She seemed friendly enough to Steve, but it was the exact same friendliness she had toward… well, everyone else. She didn’t have inside jokes with him. She didn’t have any little quirks or tells, at least not ones that he didn’t know were deliberate. There was nothing subconscious about the way she acted around him, like she was truly comfortable, enough to let down her guard.

Steve wasn’t officially the leader of the Avengers anymore, Rhodes was. But Steve still gave orders sometimes in training, still generally acted like their leader, at least when Rhodes wasn’t around and Steve didn’t think he’d be reprimanded by the suits for it. Since returning, there was something in the way Natasha listened to him and took orders. It was subtle, not always evident, but there enough for him to notice. 

Even after observing it for a while, he still couldn’t quite name it. But if pressed, he might say that she was treating him like a job. Talking to him the way he’d seen her talk to marks before, like she wasn’t actually invested in him as a person, as a friend.

It bothered him, in no small part because he wasn’t sure if it was always like that, or if something had changed. Had he never noticed it before, had Natasha never truly revealed her real self to him and he hadn’t been shrewd enough to see it? Or was she withdrawing the same way Bucky was?

He wondered about it for weeks before he broke down and asked her one day. He figured she would appreciate the blunt, straightforward question instead of dancing around the subject. He wasn’t sure if he was quite prepared for the answer, however.

When asked if something was bothering her about Steve, she gazed out the window and gave a tiny, sardonic smile. “Nothing about you,” she said.

“But something is bothering you,” Steve pushed. “You’ve been… acting different.”

Something flashed in Natasha’s eyes. “I’ve been acting, you mean. Falling back into old habits.”

There was something bitter, maybe challenging, in the way she said it, and Steve raised his hands in surrender. “That’s not what I’m saying. I just… want to know what’s been bothering you.”

She relaxed again from the defensive stance she’d tensed into, leaning against the window and gazing out it once more. “No you don’t,” she said with another humorless smile, but when she glanced over and met Steve’s frustrated expression, she sighed. “I picked the wrong side, in Germany.”

Privately, Steve had worried that some of his teammates thought along those lines, but it was still a blow to hear it. “You helped us,” he said, “you said you understood.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I never said I understood. You assumed that because I told you I’d realized you weren’t going to stop. You know I only said that to Tony so he wouldn’t feel like I’d turned my back on him. But he saw through it. One too many tries to manipulate him, I suppose. He’s a forgiving person by nature, more than is ever good for him. We both know that.” She gave him another sideways look. “But even he has his limits.”

Steve bristled. He wasn’t sure if it was more to do with the poke at his and Tony’s relationship and the ways Steve had screwed it up, or the admission that she was lying to Tony to try to manipulate him. “So why did you help us, then?”

“I had my reasons,” she said cryptically, “though they weren’t good enough. I suppose none of us were thinking as clearly as we should have. I’d gotten soft, complacent. And now I’ve lost any ground I’d ever gained with Tony. He’ll never trust me again.”

“You’re talking about us like it’s one of your jobs,” Steve said, unable to keep the accusatory note out of his voice. “Like we weren’t—aren’t—friends. Family.”

She turned back to look out the window once more. “It’s all part of the game.”

Steve wasn’t sure when, exactly, Natasha left him, but the ache in his chest lingered.

Sam waited a while to physically leave, but Steve knew he was gone long before that. He was gone as soon as they got back home. Really, he was gone in Wakanda, with the arrival of a box that shattered Steve’s heart.

Steve had sat down the moment he got all of his team back to the safety of Wakanda, guilt and pain sitting heavy in his stomach. He couldn’t stop seeing Tony’s face in Siberia, feeling the leaden weight in his stomach that had descended when he realized what was on that tape, that the secret he’d carefully kept from his lover for years was about to come out in the worst way possible and that Steve needed to protect his best friend who was so vulnerable in that moment, rather than the man he loved who was drowning in his grief.

He’d written a letter, trying to pour his thoughts out on the page, to get everything down before it left his head. All of his thoughts. All of his regrets, and his apology. Tony needed it. He deserved it. He sent a phone, too, knowing Tony would probably know where they were and be able to contact them anyway, but feeling like it could be something special between just the two of them. Back in the best of times, Tony used to gently tease him about his preference for older technology.

A week after sending it, when they were starting to settle into Wakanda and the initial, flaring sting of everything that had happened was fading, one of T’Challa’s people delivered a familiar box back to Steve during breakfast one day.

When he first saw it, Steve still had a spark of foolish hope in his chest, that maybe it would just be a return letter, maybe a gift of some sort. Even as he took it, even as he felt the weight that hadn’t changed from when it was sent, he still held out hope that there would be some sort of open communication between him and Tony evident inside.

As it turned out, there was an addition to the phone and letter Steve had sent, one that shattered his heart into a thousand pieces and sent him stumbling out of the common area, tears in his eyes threatening to fall in front of everyone, to hide away in his own room.

Glittering in the bottom of the box, carelessly tossed in to bump against the cheap flip phone, sat the engagement ring Steve had put on Tony’s finger a year ago.

The rest of his team left Steve to his misery for the remainder of the day. He spent most of it lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and desperately wishing for the last few days to have been a dream, for a chance to redo everything. Despite his display in the common area, the tears wouldn’t fall. He just felt numb inside.

When he finally emerged hours later, wandering toward the kitchen with no real purpose—his appetite had fled, possibly permanently—it was to find the entire team once again gathered. They didn’t really hide the fact that they were talking about him, and stopped the moment he walked around the corner. He couldn’t really bring himself to care.

They’d left him to his grief immediately after the discovery, but apparently that was over once he’d chosen to come out on his own, because Sam cornered him in the kitchen, demanding to know what had happened between him and Tony.

Steve wanted to refuse to talk, to say that it was private, because it was. But he also understood. Tony wasn’t just Steve’s fiancé, he was an Avenger, their financial backer, their political liaison, and right then, probably their only chance at getting back home without being locked up. 

Still, Steve didn’t need their dirty laundry aired out for everyone to see. He tried to deflect, to stay general and avoid having to tell Sam the details. He tried to tell himself it was to preserve Tony’s privacy, but deep inside, he knew very well he was only protecting himself. Just like he’d written in that letter. He didn’t even know if Tony had actually read it, or just thrown his ring into the box and sent it straight back.

But Sam wouldn’t let it go. “This wasn’t just an argument over the Accords. I’ve seen you guys fight. I’ve seen you get personal, even, but man, Tony was in _love_ with you. He never would have taken that damn ring off. You know how many times I caught him staring at it and smiling like an idiot?”

Steve couldn’t meet Sam’s eyes. He knew exactly what Sam was talking about, because he’d seen it himself plenty of times. Steve still wore the ring Tony had made for him in return, made with his own two hands. Steve hadn’t made his, didn’t have Tony’s talent for that, but Tony loved it just the same. Steve had seen him admiring it, smiling to himself whenever it caught the light, sometimes leaning forward to kiss Steve, unprompted by anything except catching a glimpse of the ring. Something twisted in Steve to think that he might never see that secretive little smile on Tony’s face again.

When he was silent for too long, Sam pushed again. Too overcome by shame, Steve confessed. He couldn’t stop seeing Tony’s face when he watched that video, shellshocked and shutting down behind grief and numbness. Hearing him demand that Steve tell him the truth. Steve had never thought of himself as dishonest before; he would have claimed the opposite, in the pas.t. He’d have said that he hated liars, and then he let himself become one.

After that… well, it was never the same between them. Sam was disappointed in Steve, that much was clear. Really, disappointed was an understatement. Disillusioned, maybe. He looked at Steve like a stranger, with caution, like someone dangerous who might lash out at him at any minute.

Things changed between Sam and the others, too, Steve noticed. Sam clung to Rhodes’ leadership at first, following every order and never straying from protocols, and on the surface it appeared as if he was just grateful for his second chance and determined to prove that he was worthy of being an Avenger under the Accords.

Behind closed doors, however, he avoided most of the others. He didn’t talk to Steve unless absolutely necessary, obviously, but he didn’t talk as much to Nat or Wanda anymore after they got back. Whenever any of the pardoned Avengers clashed with any of the others, he stayed back and reused to participate. He was silent during the sessions where they talked about amending the Accords and changes that needed to be worked in.

Steve wasn’t sure what went on between Sam and Tony. He knew they had at least one serious private conversation, because there was a clear change in their dynamic about a week after returning. Tony was more open and friendly toward Sam—the few times that Steve got to actually see them interact, that was, since Tony was also pretty thoroughly avoiding Steve—and yet Sam seemed to be more withdrawn and quiet than ever.

A few months after returning, an unexpected meeting was called. It wasn’t entirely unusual, they had meetings all the time for new announcements, small changes, tweaks, visitors, all kinds of things. Steve wasn’t the least bit worried until Rhodes walked in and started the meeting without Sam.

Sam was retiring. Giving up the wings, going back to working with vets, and moving out of New York. Rhodes didn’t give a reason, saying Sam’s reasons were his own and he wasn’t required to give one at all. Rhodes stayed and answered a few questions about the change in team dynamics with the loss of one of their members, but Steve noticed that no one around the table really seemed surprised about the news. Sam had been gone for quite a while before really leaving, after all.

It was shortly after Sam left that Steve finally worked up the courage to approach Tony on his own.

Tony had made it clear enough, with the return of Steve’s attempt at an apology, that said apology was _not_ accepted. Steve could accept that, he could even understand it. Nothing he said in a letter could come close to being enough to apologize for what he did to Tony, and he knew it. It was probably selfish of him to even send it in the first place, counting on Tony’s practically inhuman capacity for forgiveness and hoping he would accept Steve back that easily after such a major upset.

So he gave Tony more time. He didn’t seek him out, as much as he wanted to, even when they returned. They sat in the same room through meetings and briefings, they even worked together in the field once or twice since returning, and though it physically hurt to restrain himself, Steve didn’t do anything to force interaction between himself and Tony in that time. He hoped that with enough time to process and to work through his rightful anger, Tony would eventually be willing to hear Steve’s apology again.

The thing that was really killing Steve was the return of the ring. He didn’t know what it meant. Sam was right when he said that Tony would never have taken it off—at least, Steve didn’t think so. They’d fought before since the engagement, sometimes seriously enough not to talk to each other for a few days, and yet Steve had never seen Tony’s hand bare since they’d gotten engaged.

Of course, nothing they fought about was ever like Siberia. Steve had never lied to Tony like that before. He’d never kept something so big from him. He’d never chosen to defend his friend over his lover before. He’d never—Steve had to swallow bile down every time he thought about it—physically fought Tony before.

To use a personal weakness that was told in confidence against somebody was a weak, cowardly, despicable thing to do. And yet, Steve had done it. Not intentionally, but he had. At the time, he’d just wanted to end the fighting. He needed to defend Bucky, and Tony wasn’t stopping, and it had all spiraled out of control so quickly. He had to shut down the Iron Man suit before Tony remembered he could easily just blast Bucky away with a missile or decapitate him with a laser. Destroying the arc reactor was the easiest way to do that.

It wasn’t until the adrenaline rush from the fight had faded, and he and Bucky were on a plane to Wakanda with T’Challa, that memories came rushing back to Steve fast enough to make him retch at the back of the plane. Tony, waking in the middle of the night after having the arc reactor removed, panicking because the glow was gone and that meant his death. Tony freezing in the middle of an intimate moment because Steve’s hand had snuck around to the center of his chest and Tony couldn’t keep back the flashback of Stane stealing the reactor right out of his chest while Tony sat, paralyzed, and watched his godfather betray him and leave him for dead.

Since finding out about what happened with Stane, Steve could only picture the position Tony was in at the time, how horrific that must have been. And in that plane, the scene he’d constructed so many times in his mind came back to him, but now it was Steve leaning over Tony, his full weight on the suit, holding him down. Bringing his shield down on the reactor, but first, raising it above his head. That split second of real terror in Tony’s eyes, the way his hands had flown up to his face, like he really believed, in that moment, that Steve was about to bring the shield down on his neck.

And why wouldn’t he? Steve had to shrug off Bucky’s concerned hand on his back as he knelt at the back of the plane, willing himself not to let go and throw up, that or pass out. In the heat of the moment, he’d only thought about ending the fight, shutting down the suit. But to do it… he’d _hit_ Tony. Punched him in the face. Multiple times. It wasn’t… Tony was no damsel in distress, and he’d probably have punched Steve right back for ever comparing him to a woman being abused by her husband, but… something fractured inside Steve at the realization. He’d have once thought he would rather die than hit someone he was in a relationship with. He was glad, in that moment, that he’d left his shield in that bunker, because otherwise he might have hurled it out of the plane right then and there. And himself along with it. Tony was right. He didn’t deserve it.

Now, he stood in front of the glass door to Tony’s lab, where Tony was working inside, drowning in his own guilt and wondering whether he even deserved to speak to Tony, to ask if there was any chance of forgiveness in the future. He wasn’t expecting it now, but maybe, just maybe, if he could do enough to prove how sorry he was…

He was still wearing his own ring. The ring Tony had made for him. He couldn’t bring himself to take it off, even though the sight of it just filled him with guilt. He’d kept Tony’s, carried it around with him. Like it was penance, to carry its weight until he deserved to be able to put it back on Tony’s finger.

The door opened in front of him just as he was finally taking a breath to ask FRIDAY to let him in. He startled, not sure at first what had happened, but then Tony’s voice drifted out to him. “You’ve been standing out there for fifteen minutes. Just come in.”

He didn’t sound angry, which should have been good, but Steve’s heart still sank. Tony sounded the same as he did in meetings these days when he had to say something to Steve, or to the room at large. Neutral. Gone was the teasing, fond tone he used to use around Steve. He expected it, but it still hurt.

He made his way cautiously into Tony’s space, knowing that the lab was Tony’s sanctuary and Steve being invited in at all was an olive branch Tony didn’t need to give, one Steve didn’t necessarily deserve. Tony was sitting at one of the benches, bent over and working on something tiny—going by the scattered parts around him, it was some inner component of the latest Iron Man suit.

“Did you need something?” Tony asked, still intent on his work, and Steve grimaced. He knew Tony was perfectly capable of multitasking, and in fact sometimes did better when he was working on something while talking, but in the old days he would always swing around to face Steve whenever Steve came down to talk to him. Tony would joke and say it was in deference to Steve’s “old-fashioned values,” that or wink and say he just liked to look at Steve.

There was none of that now. He could tell from Tony’s posture that he was paying attention, not dismissing him, but that’s all there was. Polite professionalism. Nothing more.

Steve swallowed and forced himself to take a breath, to say this right the first time. “Tony, I know you’ve needed time, and if you still need more, just tell me, I’ll give it to you. But I wanted to apologize to you. If—if you’re ready to hear it.”

He forced himself not to say more, not to launch into apologies without waiting for Tony’s blessing. Tony was silent for a moment, bending over his work, before he straightened and set his tiny tools aside, raking a hand through his hair as he swung himself around on his stool to face Steve.

It should have been a good sign, but Steve barely concealed a wince when he saw Tony’s face. He looked exhausted. He always did these days, Steve had noticed, but he was usually putting effort into concealing it around the others. This was the first time Steve had been alone with him since coming back, and Tony wasn’t trying to hide, for once.

The other glaring thing was the lack of warmth in his eyes. Another thing Steve expected, but still ached to see it. Even when Tony wasn’t smiling before, his eyes were always warm, welcoming, friendly, loving. There was none of that now.

“Okay,” Tony said, and something about the easy way he said it sent foreboding through Steve. “What do you want to apologize for?”

So many things. Steve wasn’t sure if he’d expected to be asked so openly, and he floundered for just a second before answering. “A lot of things. I—Tony, I have so much to apologize for.”

He thought maybe starting off by acknowledging that might help, so that Tony knew Steve realized how badly he screwed up. He knew how much he had to apologize for already, he wasn’t just going to start off small and only keep adding things on if Tony acted like he needed more.

Tony just looked at him. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course, Tony. Anything,” Steve said.

“In Germany, at the airport,” Tony started, speaking slowly as if he was considering every word, “why didn’t you tell me about the other Soldiers? That you were going after them?”

Steve couldn’t conceal the flinch at that. He’d been so shortsighted there, so arrogant. Going in ready to fight, assuming that Tony and his team would be the ones itching for a fight when really, it was him. He was so focused on getting out of there and dealing with the threat without getting held back by red tape and government officials, he made things worse than they needed to be.

He’d told himself, right after it happened, that Tony hadn’t given him a chance to speak. But when he thought back, he really had. He’d given him multiple chances, and Steve just… hadn’t taken them. He was afraid to admit the reason why. 

“I wasn’t sure if you would help us,” he finally said, wincing even as he said it. It sounded so bad to just say it outright like that.

Still in the same neutral tone, Tony asked, “You thought I wouldn’t want that threat dealt with? Or that I wouldn’t believe you?”

“No, it’s not… You were working with Ross,” Steve trailed off, not sure what else to say about that, but of course, Tony wouldn’t accept that lame answer.

“And? Ross wasn’t there in Germany.”

“No, but you were working with him. You’d signed the Accords—”

“And the Accords would have stopped me from helping you with Zemo and the threat of the Winter Soldiers?”

Steve hesitated, feeling like the easy answer was a trap. “Well, yes. I—they were going to restrict us, keep us from helping if… if the government didn’t want us to—”

There was a spark of genuine anger in Tony’s eyes now. “Didn’t want us to interfere in their affairs? Yes, sure. It’s every country’s right to tell a group of foreign vigilantes to stay the hell out of their business, as it should be. But we were talking about going to Siberia, specifically. So tell me, in all of your vast experience with the Accords, which consisted of listening to the world’s fastest rundown while Ross breathed down my neck—because of course you couldn’t have bothered to keep up and find out about them yourself, or even just been around to listen to me for the last few months while I worked on some of preliminary stuff, could you? No, you were too busy running around on my dime trying to find _Bucky_ and keeping me out of it, for obvious reasons.”

Steve wanted to bury his face in his hands at that, to close his eyes against the real anger, the hurt in Tony’s eyes. Instead, he forced himself to keep looking. “Tony, I’m so sorry. I never—” 

Tony held a hand up and Steve shut up immediately. Tony looked away for just a second, taking a deep breath, and when he looked back, the anger was gone, replaced with that careful neutrality once more. “Anyway, since you apparently knew enough about the Accords after one ten-minute meeting to reject them completely, tell me, how would they have stopped me from helping you in Siberia? Surely they might have emergency clauses, where live updates rather than preemptive communication would suffice? Like I did when I went there?”

That stopped Steve short. “You did?”

“Of course I did. As soon as I knew I was going to have to fly into their country on the tail of three wanted men and a potential time bomb of super soldiers, I let the Russian authorities know that it was an emergency situation and I had to cross the border. Who do you think found me after you left?”

The steely look in Tony’s eyes told Steve not to say anything about exactly what happened in Siberia right that moment. With difficulty, he focused back on the journey there and the reasons he hadn’t told Tony. “But Ross—”

“Didn’t know where I was going. I hated that slimeball, I know even you could see that just from our few interactions. You’re right, he’s a jackass who had his own agenda the entire time, and I told him I had no idea where you were before I left to go after you.”

“But you told the Russians,” Steve said, uncertain.

“And they told Ross, yeah,” Tony finished for him. “Obviously, he was going to find out one way or another. But he didn’t need to know immediately. If he was further down on the list, then he couldn’t keep up with me, or beat me there. I’d have had time to help you, either to take care of the problem or just to escape, before the real authorities got there. Didn’t mean the Russians didn’t deserve to know.”

“Oh.” Steve didn’t know what else to say to that.

“Oh,” Tony repeated, and though his tone wasn’t mocking, Steve got that feeling anyway. “So, again, tell me, Steve. What was it about me being cornered into agreeing with Ross on the Accords that made you decide I couldn’t be told about anything at all?”

Steve hesitated again. “He could have been listening in, I mean, threatening you… holding you under duress…”

Tony raised an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed. “If you really thought that, then why didn’t you try to help me? I thought that was your job? At no point during any of that entire days-long clusterfuck did you even so much as ask me if I was okay.”

Steve looked away, finally, ashamed. He didn’t ask Tony if Ross was threatening him, Tony was right, and he should have. But really, he knew why he didn’t—because he didn’t really think that was the problem. “What do you want from me?” he whispered.

Tony’s gaze hardened again. “I want you to admit that you didn’t trust me. I want you to stop giving me excuses, and just say, out loud, to my face, that you didn’t trust me enough, personally or professionally, to give me vital information.”

“Why?” Despair and desperation were clear in Steve’s voice.

Tony sat back, neutrality overtaking his features once more. “Because I know why you’re here. I know what you want from me, and I want to forestall the excuses and the bargaining and the bullshit. Maybe if you say it out loud, you’ll understand.”

“Understand what?” Steve shook his head. “Tony, please…”

“You haven’t taken your ring off.”

The abrupt change of subject set Steve’s head spinning. He glanced down at the ring he still wore, feeling something twist in his stomach. “I love you,” he said, feeling like it needed to be said out loud.

“Yet you don’t trust me.”

“That’s not—”

“We just established this,” Tony bit out. “Don’t start lying to me again already.”

Steve snapped his mouth shut, hurt.

Tony looked up at him. “Do you see? I can’t trust you. You came here to ask me to give you something that you won’t give me. I trusted you once, even though you didn’t return the favor. Now I’ve seen the truth. I can never trust you again.”

Steve could practically feel his heart breaking. “Tony, please, don’t say that. Whatever you need, more time, proof that I’m sorry, I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever I need to. Let me prove to you that I can earn your trust back.”

Tony shook his head. “You don’t get it. You _can’t_. It’s not just a matter of what you did in the past. It’s that I couldn’t see through it. You told me once that you loved me, that you trusted me, that I was the most important thing in the world to you, and I believed you. I had no way of knowing that you were lying to me.”

Steve took a step closer to Tony, as though he could prevent Tony from saying any more, from breaking his heart any further, just by being close enough. “That’s not true. I wasn’t lying to you.”

“Then you’re lying to yourself,” Tony said, then shook his head. He raked a hand through his hair again, then stood up, coming to stand in front of Steve, looking him over. It wasn’t the appreciative once-over that Tony used to give him in private, lingering on his backside, or the appraising look he used to give him after missions, making sure there was no damage Steve was trying to hide from him. It wasn’t even the critical, sneering look Tony had once given him when they’d first met, telling him he was lacking, that he didn’t live up to being the person Howard used to compare Tony to. If anything, this look was sad, almost bittersweet, like Tony was looking at something he wanted but couldn’t have.

 _You can have me back_ , Steve wanted to shout. _Please, I’ll do anything for you to see that_. “Give me a chance,” he whispered instead. “I’ll do better, I swear to you I will.”

Tony’s voice was as melancholy as his face when he replied. “You know, once, you told me you would never hit me. And obviously, that was impossible. Things happen. In the life we live, it’s just not realistic. But you kept insisting on it. When we trained, even if we sparred, you’d never so much as swing at me. Even if you knew I could dodge it, and it was just training, you wouldn’t try to hit me. I know I bitched at you for treating me like some swooning girl, but it was sweet, really. And even when I came up with theoretical scenarios where it seemed like you’d have to do it, just to test you, you’d always find a way around it. You were so insistent, and even though I still thought it was an unrealistic goal, I really started to believe you. That Captain America conviction. You could do anything you set your mind to. Now, when you tell me you’ll do better, that you’ll prove I can trust you again, you know what you sound like? You sound exactly like you did when you promised me you’d never lay a hand on me.”

Tony gave him a tiny, bitter, absolutely heartbreaking smile. “And then you put me in the hospital. Guess I wasn’t worth the effort after all.”

Tony turned back to his work, nothing else to say, and Steve didn’t try to defend himself. He gave Tony the peace he wanted and left, leaving the shattered pieces of his heart behind on the workshop floor.

He didn’t know where to go from here. He’d broken something he could never fix.

**Author's Note:**

> Technically, most patients with takotsubo cardiomyopathy (aka “broken heart syndrome”) do in fact recover most or all of their cardiac function, but the name was too fitting for this story. Don’t judge me, I’m a sucker for the medical stuff.


End file.
